You are here

Vancouver Foundation Initiatives

We focus energy on priority issues identified through community dialogues, research, youth engagement, and relationships with donors, charities, and other organizations. We work in collaboration with community partners to set meaningful goals and achieve them together.

Community Research

Our research tells us that people today feel a lack of togetherness in community life. A lack of belonging. Through community consultations and independent research, we’ve heard a hunger for social connections, and a desire among people from different ethnicities, cultures, income and age groups, to engage each other to build a stronger sense of community.

We support projects and research that help people build relationships with each other, and participate in activities that make our community better.

Through the research we conduct and the work we do throughout BC, we know that people are longing for a deeper connection to their neighbours and community. We closed our 2017 Connect and Engage report with a call to action: for everyone to build a greater sense of welcome and belonging in their community. We’re using our 75th anniversary to step up and do our part.

On the Table is a series of events powered by Vancouver Foundation to encourage community connection. We’re inviting people and organizations across the province to gather friends, neighbours, coworkers, and family to sit down, share some food, and talk about what matters most. The topics people discuss will be collected and shared—giving us an exciting snapshot of what’s on people’s minds throughout BC right now.

Our Connections and Engagement research underpins all our grassroots community building activities, including community dialogues and grassroots granting.

In 2012, our first Connections and Engagement report revealed some challenging findings about the strength of our personal and neighbourhood connections.

Our 2017 Connect & Engage Report digs deeper. It examines who may be experiencing stronger or weaker social connections, explores the barriers to being more connected and engaged, and looks for opportunities to move beyond the issues and catalyze action.

Find out more about our Connections and Engagement research, and download our reports produced with data from independent research, community consultations, and third party sources.

Vital Signs is an annual check-up conducted by community foundations to measure the vitality of communities across Canada. It gathers and publishes data on significant social and economic trends and assigns grades in areas critical to quality of life.

Vancouver Foundation participates in Vital Signs to provide a far-reaching and critical perspective on the state of community in our region.

Youth Engagement

No one gets an equal start in life. We focus on youth engagement to make sure that all young people have the opportunities and support they need to thrive. Our work leverages the collective knowledge, expertise, and resources of our staff and our extended network of community partners.

We support authentic conversations on difficult topics, and create the space for everyone – especially vulnerable groups – to have voice and influence over decisions that affect their lives. Making sure young people are active participants in this work is essential to our approach.

Our Fostering Change initiative focused on engaging young people with lived experience of transitioning from foster care to adulthood. Now that important progress has been made, Vancouver Foundation is returning the Fostering Change initiative to the community that inspired it.

Find out more about Fostering Change, and how this work is evolving in partnership with First Call.

Fresh Voices is a group of immigrant and refugee youth, originally convened by Vancouver Foundation, who are inspiring each other to make BC a better place for young newcomers.

Find out more about Fresh Voices, and see how young immigrants and refugees are self-organizing with the support of PeerNetBC.

Shared Skills and Knowledge

Vancouver Foundation sees the potential and benefits of unlocking our own intellectual property – the things we create and the works that we fund. By making the data sets, research articles, photographs, educational materials and resources that we fund open and shareable under easy-to-understand terms and conditions, we are removing real and perceived limits to sharing and consuming.

Our goal is to inspire the organizations we work with to help spread good ideas throughout our communities and beyond, to fully realize the potential of the content we create, and to better share the knowledge gained from it.

Vancouver Foundation's Open Licensing Policy, effective January 1, 2017 and onwards, is applicable to materials and resources produced by Vancouver Foundation, and materials and resources produced by Field of Interest Program grantees who submit new proposals and receive funding after the effective date.

Partnerships

Making communities stronger and more vibrant is much easier when you’ve got great partners. We are lucky to work with some of the best minds and organizations in BC when it comes to building community.

The Greenest City Fund is a unique, four-year partnership between the City of Vancouver and Vancouver Foundation that is designed to help Vancouver become the greenest city in the world by 2020. In April 2012, both organizations contributed $1 million each to create the Fund.

Many people with disabilities struggle with their taxes. We’ve partnered with Disability Alliance BC to assist people who are receiving the Persons with Disabilities (PWD) benefit or the Persons with Persistent and Multiple Barriers (PPMB) benefit with simple income tax filings and information/referrals.